Over the weekend, I took my 2021 Can-Am Maverick X3 Max ds Turbo R into the woods to chase mule deer.
And while it's something I've done all season long, I went into a new trail that I'd never been through before. All I found were two does, but that's not the point of this story. No, what I also encountered was something that many of the other trails around my house normally don't have.
Boulders.
I'm not talking about baby heads, the sort of stuff that terrifies you on motorcycles, but rather proper rock-crawling boulders that once you're up, as you go down, they slam into your UTV's skid plate. Now, I've kept my Can-Am's ride height as had come from the dealership since I bought it three years ago because I don't exactly like a higher-riding go-fast UTV. I don't want it to wallow and I like going quickly, so a higher ride height is going to mean more body roll.
But if I'm going to go back to this spot and chase a few bucks I hope are chasing the does, I'd rather not screw up my skid plate and suspension. So it was time to adjust some settings, and little did I know how easy it was, which is why I'm going to give you a quick overview on how to adjust your Can-Am UTV's ride height.
Don't worry, you can do it in less than an hour.
First and foremost, you'll want to take some measurements. I could only go up so much before the top of my Can-Am hit my garage frame, so I first measured that. I had about three-plus inches, which would be plenty to get me over most of the obstacles. I then measured both the front ground clearance and the rear, as well as from the top of the shock body to the top of the jam nut. Once I had those measurements for all four corners, as well as the ground clearance, I went about adjusting the jam nuts down to increase the ride height.
To adjust those, you first want to raise the vehicle off the ground so as to take out preload. I did this by using a Harbor Freight off-road jack, first jacking up the front, then the rear. I then broke the jam nuts loose either through by using the supplied shock jam nut adjustment wrench that's in your glovebox or, and this is the easier way, by using a flathead screwdriver and a hammer to break the jam nuts' seal with one another. You'll want to just lightly tap on the jam nuts until they split so as to not damage anything.
From there, you can grab the lower spring and twist the whole shock clockwise to raise the ride height. You may have to use the jam nut wrench every so often if there's still mud or debris in the shock's threads. I checked every few turns to make sure I was getting to where my predetermined ride height should be. I did the front shocks first, then the rears, but the process of adjusting the ride height is exactly the same.
What isn't the same is how much I added.
Because there was a slight rake to the original setup, I had to add a little more to the rear versus the front to get it all to line up evenly. But again, the process of adjusting the ride height was exactly the same, i.e. loosen jam nuts, twist springs until they raise the ride height, and tighten jam nuts once you get to the proper spec.
One top tip, raise the suspension all the way off the ground, as even a little pre-load pressure will make twisting the springs harder.
Lastly, you'll want to adjust your crossover jam nuts, which are usually located mid-way down the shock. My fronts, luckily, were perfectly in spec even after I adjusted the ride height, but my rears were absolutely not. For those, I had to lower them a full 3.6 inches. But like the pre-load jam nuts, using a hammer and a flathead to break their seal worked perfectly and it's a simple affair from there by just twisting them down to the proper spec.
All in all, it took me about an hour to get everything the way I wanted, though I had to adjust the rears twice because my garage isn't tall enough to both jack it all the way up and check ground clearance. I ended up having to pull it out into my gravel driveway to make the adjustments, then pull it into my garage to check ground clearance.
And that's it!
If you don't want to read all my writing, Can-Am also put out a great video linked above, which is how I did it so quickly, too. Good hunting, folks!
